Pacemakers provide electrical stimulus to heart tissue to cause the heart to contract and hence pump blood. Conventionally, pacemakers include a pulse generator that is implanted, typically in a patient's pectoral region just under the skin. One or more leads extend from the pulse generator and into chambers of the heart, most commonly in the right ventricle and the right atrium, although sometimes also into a vein over the left chambers of the heart. An electrode is at a far end of a lead and provides the electrical contact to the heart tissue for delivery of the electrical pulses generated by the pulse generator and delivered to the electrode through the lead.
The conventional use of leads that extend from the pulse generator and into the heart chambers has various drawbacks. For example, leads have at their far ends a mechanism, such as tines or a “j-hook,” that causes the lead to be secured to a tissue region where a physician positions the lead. Over time, the heart tissue becomes intertwined with the lead to keep the lead in place. Although this is advantageous in that it ensures the tissue region selected by the physician continues to be the region that is paced even after the patient has left the hospital, it is also disadvantageous in the event of a lead failure or in the event it is later found that it would be more desirable to pace a different location than the tissue region initially selected. Failed leads cannot always be left in the patient's body, due to any potential adverse reaction the leads may have on heart function, including infection, thrombosis, valve dysfunction, etc. Therefore, difficult lead removal procedures sometimes must be employed.
The conventional use of leads also limits the number of sites of heart tissue at which electrical energy may be delivered. The reason the use of leads is limiting is that leads most commonly are positioned within cardiac veins. As shown in FIG. 17, up to three leads 2, 3 and 4 are implanted in conventional pacing systems that perform multiple-site pacing of the heart 1, with the leads exiting the right atrium 5 via the superior vena cava 6. Multiple leads may block a clinically significant fraction of the cross section of the vena cava and branching veins leading to the pacemaker implant.
No commercial pacing lead has been indicated for use in the chambers of the left side of the heart. This is because the high pumping pressure on the left side of the heart may eject thrombus or clot that forms on a lead or electrode into distal arteries feeding critical tissues and causing stroke or other embolic injury. Thus, conventional systems, as shown in FIG. 17, designed to pace the left side of the heart thread a pacing lead 2 through the coronary sinus ostium 7, located in the right atrium 5, and through the coronary venous system 8 to a location 9 in a vein over the site to be paced on the left side. While a single lead may occlude a vein over the left heart locally, this is overcome by the fact that other veins may compensate for the occlusion and deliver more blood to the heart. Nevertheless, multiple leads positioned in veins would cause significant occlusion, particularly in veins such as the coronary sinus that would require multiple side-by-side leads.
There are several heart conditions that may benefit from pacing at multiple sites of heart tissue. One such condition is congestive heart failure (CHF). It has been found that CHF patients have benefited from bi-ventricular pacing, that is, pacing of both the left ventricle and the right ventricle in a timed relationship. Such therapy has been referred to as “resynchronization therapy.” It is believed that many more patients could benefit if multiple sites in the left and right ventricles could be synchronously paced. In addition, pacing at multiple sites may be beneficial where heart tissue through which electrical energy must propagate is scarred or dysfunctional, which condition halts or alters the propagation of an electrical signal through that heart tissue. In these cases multiple-site pacing may be useful to restart the propagation of the electrical signal immediately downstream of the dead or sick tissue area. Synchronized pacing at multiple sites on the heart may inhibit the onset of fibrillation resulting from slow or aberrant conduction, thus reducing the need for implanted or external cardiac defibrillators. Arrhythmias may result from slow conduction or enlargement of the heart chamber. In these diseases, a depolarization wave that has taken a long and/or slow path around a heart chamber may return to its starting point after that tissue has had time to re-polarize. In this way, a never ending “race-track” or “circus” wave may exist in one or more chambers that is not synchronized with normal sinus rhythm. Atrial fibrillation, a common and life threatening condition, may often be associated with such conduction abnormalities. Pacing at a sufficient number of sites in one or more heart chambers, for example in the atria, may force all tissue to depolarize in a synchronous manner to prevent the race-track and circus rhythms that lead to fibrillation.
Systems using wireless electrodes that are attached to the epicardial surface of the heart to stimulate heart tissue have been suggested as a way of overcoming the limitations that leads pose. In the suggested system, wireless electrodes receive energy for generating a pacing electrical pulse via inductive coupling of a coil in the electrode to a radio frequency (RF) antenna attached to a central pacing controller, which may also be implanted. The wireless electrodes are screwed into the outside surface of the heart wall.